[Leaplist] Floppy problem in Lenny - Debian

[Richard F. Ostrow Jr.]

On Tue, July 10, 2007 4:39 pm, Whit Hansell wrote:
> Richard,
> Thanks for replying.  I appreciate it.
>
> brightsun:/# dmesg | grep fd
> mapped APIC to ffffd000 (fee00000)
> Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M

Ok, that's clear proof that the kernel did load a floppy

> As to lsmod,  I got nfs, ext3, and of course a bunch more but no msdos,
> or vfat or fat.  So I did as you suggested and ran modprobe msdos,
> modprobe vfat and now at the top of the new lsmod list I get:
>
> brightsun:/# lsmod
> Module                  Size  Used by
> vfat                   11648  0
> msdos                   8576  0
> fat                    45980  2 vfat,msdos
>      etc.........
>
> So now I show these modules, I guess, available?

Good, that means the modules are available if needed (mount would
auto-load them as needed).

>
> So I just popped in a floppy to the drive and
>
> brightsun:/# mount -t msdos /dev/fd0 /media/floppy0
> mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/fd0,
>        missing codepage or other error
>        In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
>        dmesg | tail  or so

Interesting... If this were a kernel that you compiled yourself, I'd
recommend verifying that you have codepage 437 compiled in... but I can't
imagine that anyone would release a kernel with a distro without that, and
I'd tend to think you'd be running into all sorts of other problems if
that were the case. I'm going to keep this possibility at the back of my
mind as we try other things...

>
> brightsun:/# dmesg | tail
> FAT: bogus number of reserved sectors
> VFS: Can't find a valid FAT filesystem on dev fd0.
> FAT: bogus number of reserved sectors
> VFS: Can't find a valid FAT filesystem on dev fd0.

Pretty clear it's not reading correctly... the question is why?

>
> brightsun:/# mount /dev/fd0
> mount: you must specify the filesystem type

What's in your /etc/fstab file for the floppy? You can get that pretty
quick with a "grep fd0 /etc/fstab".

Also, try the following and see if it works:

"mount -t vfat /dev/fd0 /media/floppy0"

Maybe the fs is incorrect?

>
> brightsun:/# mount msdos /dev/fd0
> mount: special device msdos does not exist

That's an invalid mount command. At the least, you need a -t to define the
type (msdos).

>
> I really don't understand this stuff.  I don't know what I am looking at
> specifically so can't tell the drivers or modules loaded or not or what
> is going on.  I really appreciate your looking at it for me.  Maybe we
> can get it figured out.
>
> What do you think?  TIA
>
> Whit